Excerpt from Dolby.com
Do you think that sound is 50 percent of the experience?
"I still believe that there is no |
I love it when people say that, but I can’t say so. It’s like asking the baker who makes cakes if cakes are the best things around! What I do believe is that sound in filmmaking is an enormous bang for the buck, and for some reason I don’t think that we [technicians] quite get the respect that we deserve, given the value that we add to films. I have, arguably, one of the best home theater/studios on the planet, but I still believe that there is no substitute for going to a movie theatre that’s properly tuned by Dolby. You go into this dark room, and the only thing that you’re doing there is focusing on this picture. That’s the most respectful way to watch a movie, and I hope we never lose it.
In Broken Arrow, there’s this scene where the A-bomb goes off and the ground sort of heaves up in a wave toward the audience.
That’s one of the sections that I designed. It was one of the films I enjoyed working on the most, and it marked my first collaboration with George Watters, who was supervising sound editor. To get that effect you mention, I sort of wrap my head around the technical issue of what happens when. And as with any time when you need to do something cataclysmic, you really need to play with violence versus loudness. I think of an atomic bomb as pulling sound out of the world, as opposed to putting it in.
This kind of thing is always a big challenge, because so often the production wants to arrive at the major climactic moment, and they’ve already brought a freight train of sound. So I have to try to figure out a way to work against that. You can’t be in a battle that’s really loud, and all of a sudden introduce a cannon and make that louder.
>>Read the complete interview at Dolby.com
Boyes recalls his work on three action-packed movies...
1 Jurassic Park (1993)
Boyes was a foley artist on Spielberg’s dino-thriller: ‘I love foley. As a sound designer I create all sorts of supernatural sounds, ethereal sounds. My feeling is that foley really grounds everything in reality, almost giving an honest base to everything else. You can do this wonderful job of sound design and effects work, but until you have the foley there, it doesn’t really glue everything together.’
2 Broken Arrow (1996)
Boyes designed the memorable A-bomb explosion for this John Woo actioner: ‘It was one of the films I enjoyed working on the most. To get the A-bomb effect, I had to wrap my head around the technical issue of what happens and when. And, as with any time when you need to do something cataclysmic, you really need to play with violence versus loudness. I think of an atomic bomb as pulling sound out of the world, as opposed to putting it in.’
3 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
‘I love the scene where we go down into the Rum Locker and meet Bootstrap Bill for the first time. On the Rum Locker I worked with Shannon Mills, who’s been with me since Titanic and Volcano. The director, Gore Verbinski, requested me to create this almost vacuum-esque world, with Jack Sparrow in a dark, claustrophobic place from which he can’t escape. So we worked hard to create this atmosphere that’s like the inside of a giant, wooden, dark, wet world.
Posts
